


Return To The Ashes You Call

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), My Chemical Romance, Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance (Song)
Genre: Gen, Mild Gore, The Bands Aren't The Killjoys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22338049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: Killjoys are known for their color, for their spark and for fighting 'till they take their last breath.Party Poison doesn't know what to fight for, how to fight, when everything he's ever known is taken from him, that color, that spark, that last breath.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 47





	1. Our Lady Of Sorrows

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to replace this week's update of Friends You Made! Ha, sorry! This one might be more spontaneously updated but at the moment I am planning on continuing it past this!

##  **_Raise your glass high for tomorrow we die._ **

_ Tomorrow? No. No! _

**_Today._ **

_ After? _

**After you die, you return to the ashes you call.**

“I don’t call to any ashes!” Poison woke up screaming, sweat sticking his bright red hair to his forehead, in his eyes, blocking his surroundings and something told him he wanted it to stay that way. 

Still, he swiped his hair away; his breath stuck to his throat, but it seemed his lungs didn’t notice, too in shock of the same place Poison was staring at. 

It was… Well, the shocking thing was that he’d never been here before in his life. It was a living room. 

A welcoming, if dark, living room, with coals still smoking in the fireplace and blacked-out paintings above the mantel, obscured by dead flower petals hanging limply in their vase. Black-out curtains hid the sunlight that was surely filtering through the wall-length window, and the hardwood floors were cold underneath the sole of Poison’s boot. 

_ I shouldn’t be able to feel that, _ he thought idly.

**There’s much more you’re able to feel now, Party Poison,** the slithering voice in the back of his head laughed, a chill settling in the base of his spine.

And the voice, the voice was right, because immediately after it said that the living room - the house he was in felt wrong, cold, wrong, wrong, wrong!

Why would the paintings be blacked out?

Why could he still see perfectly; he couldn’t find a source of light anywhere, no ceiling lights, no lamps, hell - not even a nightlight!

Why was there no furniture? 

Why were there...why were there claw marks embedded into the floors, a blackened substance sticking his boot to the ground - blood. It was nearly-dried blood. 

Where was he? Where was the rest of his crew? Why wasn’t he in the Tower? Where was the Girl? 

Why did his jaw hurt so much?

Now that he thought about it, a pain so blinding he fell to knees sparked from his jaw, up to his eyes and down to his stomach, his arm paralyzed at his side in fear of causing more pain. Blinding, blinding, bright, brighter, light, blast, blast, jaw, Tower, blast jaw Tower blast jaw Tower  _ blast jaw Tower. _

Shot.

He was shot in the jaw, that’s why it hurts so much. He was shot in the jaw during the rescue of the Girl, in the Tower. 

None of that info helped him now, did it?

And slowly, slowly, gritting his teeth and forcing himself to raise his arm, to place it over the burning on his jaw, he rises off his knees, his color sinking to the floor as he rose up. 

Poison wasn’t kidding about that, either. The color of his jeans and jacket seemed to drip down his body, sinking into the floor and becoming part of a grayscale - part of the grayscale that defined the entirety of this house that he was in…

The screaming came when the red dye of his hair fell to his shoulders, pure, concentrated color, dripping down like honey but not a drop staying, blood-red fading, fading, fading as it fell, disappearing when it touched the ground.

So yeah, he screamed. He screamed because this was fucking weird and he was going crazy and color didn’t do that!

But that wasn’t what was freaking him out, not really. He knew that much, despite what he wanted to tell himself. He was scared, he was panicking, because Poison knew, oh he knew that he wasn’t going to see that color ever again.

There was no color here. And, somehow, he knew this for a fact. Color was… All the color he fought for, all the freedom he died to keep, to protect, it was all gone.

None of it mattered. 

But the thought that he was insignificant, that he was as easily washed away as his hair dye was, it was too dark for him to think of, too unfamiliar, too much like his worst fears.

Instead, Poison laughed.

His jaw screamed in protest, his veins felt like they were surging with ice or flame, he couldn’t tell, but it hurt, it hurt, and his laugh was strangled, choked. He felt strangled and choked. 

That voice, that voice in the back of his head, it laughed too. And he might as well be fucking crazy, but what did it matter? Everything he fought for was gone. He didn’t know where his crew was and he was praying to Destroya they weren’t here, they weren’t in this Hell that might just be in his head.

Wherever this was, he was going to leave. 

This was not his House of Wolves.

Oh, how wrong he was. He didn’t know where the end of his knowledge was; didn’t know what the voice in his head was supplying and what he knew for a fact.

The fact was, thought Poison as his laugh trailed out, leaving silence bearing down on him like an anchor, this was his House of Wolves.

He didn’t know what that meant, but it made perfect sense, at that moment at least. Perfect sense in a perfect Hell. 

And perfect Hell had an exit, right? This was a house, after all, and this was a living room. A quick look around heeded no success - there wasn’t...any semblance of an exit, and somehow he knew, he knew that the closed doors led farther into the house, deeper into the lurking shadows. 

Poison swallowed, closing his eyes shut and planting his feet. He didn’t know why. And instead of screaming once again, instead of shouting about ashes and color and uselessness and Hell, he said quite calmly, “You have no reason to keep me here. Let me go.”

There’s no reasonable explanation for why that worked, nor why he said it, but the shadows near the curtains parted, revealing a dented bronze doorknob - or he assumed it was, at least, considering his blind eye only saw dark gray. 

They - the shadows, that is - beckoned him forward, toward the door, and just as his fingertips brushed the doorknob, he stopped. 

Fear shot through his system, fight-or-flight activating and his hand went instantly to his ray gun, not quite pulling it out of its holster.

He didn’t want to exist through this door.

But it was the only way he was getting out of this House, and the fear, the adrenaline, keep pouring through his system, his hands shaking so badly he could barely open the door. 

Now, you see, maybe sometimes he should listen to things like that, because, you know, it was very odd to greet a wolf.

Poison didn’t know how big he thought wolves were supposed to be, but when is snarling at you and towers at around eight feet tall, with yellow predatory eyes and wisps of smoke drifting up from its coat - blurry around the edges, like...an apparition?

But it wasn’t an apparition. Poison knew that. And he knew it was a bad idea to rile up the wolf, to try to pass; this was the wolves territory. 

Maybe it was because he was paralyzed with fear, maybe it was because he was a fighter at heart, maybe it was because he didn’t know imminent doom when it shot him in the neck, he stared back at the wolf, just as defiant and passionate as he used to address crowds of glittering rebels, even if he was terrified of the odds and terrified he was marching those same rebels to their deaths. 

Poison took an experimental step forward; the wolf didn’t retreat or advance. Stayed perfectly still, though it wasn’t as hostile now. In the most human gesture Poison had seen so far, it tilted its head, like it was confused, the hostility in its eyes rapidly diminishing. 

Another experimental step forward, small, cautious, despite the fact that if that wolf decided to snap its jaws around him, there was nothing he could do. 

You know, Poison had only ever heard stories of wolves before, back in the Zones. Back at home.

This time, the wolf moved to the side, still staring at him. 

It was the same look Dr. D gave him, sometimes - one he knew well. The idea that a wolf, an animal, could mimic it so well sent shivers down his spine, like this wasn’t the most human wolf he’d ever met. 

The look was of...not fear, but worry and confusion, almost. Like it knew how much sway and power he held and knew that he could cause a tsunami of hell as the very syllable fell off his lips. Dr. D used to give him that look whenever he was leaving WKIL about to speak at a rally. 

He was getting delusional. This was all delusional, wasn’t it?

He was fucking crazy. A wolf was not giving him that look. It was too human.

But he knew, deep down, it was, and instead of facing that truth he turned his gaze away and stepped onto the creaking porch, knowing it would hold his weight, knowing the wolf wasn’t going to do anything. 

The ground, beyond the wooden steps that split under him, was a mix of ash, blood, and - and more evidence that this was Hell, and none of his prayers outweighed the things he’d done. 

It was wreckage and desolation, put simply.

Metal beams were scattered among the debris, covered in dirt, but some were still burning, molten metal gathering in pools on the ground and hissing whenever anything else came into contact. Broken wood was scattered as well, all coated in a thick layer of ash - ash that was still falling, onto his hair, his face, his jacket, his colorless fucking jacket.

Return to the ashes you call. That was what the voice said, right? Before he woke up?

Was this what it meant?

This...this world of devastation, crumbling beneath the weight of its wars - and he knew it was war that did this, from the way some areas further in the landscape were devoid of debris, but it all sat in a heavy circle around it, like a small bomb has obliterated everything in that area.

Poison found he didn’t want to know if any of the debris hid bones. 

The wolf was by his side, in his peripheral vision, but Poison paid it no mind other than absent-mindedly stroking its muzzle, like he knew it could be trusted without his full attention on the creature. It nearly purred in content, nuzzling into Poison’s touch, like it was trying to comfort him from what he was seeing.

It was difficult to look away, to look away from the carnage and the wreckage, but he squeezed his eyes shut, if only for his own sanity.

“Head for the spires.”

Snapping his eyes open, reaching for his ray gun only to find it wasn’t there - why wasn’t it there? - Poison’s eyes landed on a girl. 

It was a girl, really, too young to quite be called a woman, with a black strip of what Poison didn’t believe was paint across her eyes. She was just like the wolf, blurry around the edges, like she wasn’t quite...real. Like she didn’t quite belong. Like her attire, the...the reverse of a marching band’s color scheme, like it didn’t belong.

She smiled. Her teeth weren’t sharp, but Poison could...sense, in a way, that they were razor-sharp. That was what set the shock of fear down his spine now, holding onto the wolf’s coat near its neck for - what? Comfort? 

“I said, head for the spire,” she repeated, grinning, staring straight into the depths of his worst sins. 

Poison swallowed. Fear. Her name was Fear. She was fear. “Why should I head for the spire?”

Fear didn’t bat an eye, waving away his question, like it had an obvious answer, circling him, circling the wolf. The wolf was Fear’s, wasn’t it? That’s really why he was scared when he first saw it; he already knew it wouldn’t hurt him. Fear cackled. “You’re right, you know. He is mine. Aptly named Sorrow; he’ll make a good companion.”

“I don’t need a companion.”

“Don’t you? I mean, you can lose your mind here. It wouldn’t be the first time someone couldn’t handle all the horrors you’ll see. I said head toward the spire. If you don’t follow my advice, fine. But take care when the night falls.”

What? It was already dark! This didn’t make any sense! And, also, why in Destroya’s name would you name a wolf Sorrow? That just seemed cruel!

Before he could voice any of these thoughts, Fear had circled behind him, out of his view, and he instinctively knew she wasn’t there anymore. 

Poison swallowed, his muscles relaxing, the adrenaline leaving his system the moment she was gone. It was just him and Sorrow, and he had to laugh again. This was all very laughable, wasn’t it?

In a twisted way, this was just a darker version of something he’d already lived through. Except he didn’t have a crew, he had a wolf named Sorrow, and he didn’t have vultures and crows circling above him to tell him something horrible was going to happen, he had a mystery named Fear.

“Well,” Poison sighed, calming down, taking a sweeping look around but not analyzing anything he saw. “She said to head toward the spire. You see any spires?”

Sorrow tilted his head like it was obvious. To be fair, when Poison looked up and not just his immediate vicinity, it was. 

There was a city in the background. 

A graveyard, really, he thought; The Graveyard. There were tall, crumbling buildings, spires that touched the sky, or seemed to. 

And, in the center of it all, that made this almost exactly like the picture he saw in his night terrors, was a sleek, black tower, that wasn’t obscured in the slightest by all the ash falling, all the bombs; no, in the wreckage around it, it stood tall and proud. 

Poison instantly knew that was not where Fear was guiding him. No, that was different. She was guiding him too ...He scanned the horizon again, hoping for something that stood out, that told him where to go. H found, by the edges of the cityscape, slowing brighter than the others, was a different spire, almost as tall as the ones that touched the ash-ridden sky but not quite.

There. He was supposed to go there.

It would give him answers. 

And, like Sorrow knew what he was thinking, the wolf nudged him forward, in the direction of that glowing spire. 

It was going to take a while to get there, at least a day or two on foot and look, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen to him in the last few minutes but he was not going to ride a giant wolf. 

Something told him he wanted to get to shelter before it got dark, before the darkness really blanketed across the wasteland. 

There were no trails, no paths to follow; it looked like no one had ever stepped foot in any of this, but he looked back and saw no footprints, not even his own, despite seeing them form underneath his boots. So he had to wade through the wreckage, and of course that couldn’t be a simple task.

His hands burned from where they’d touched boiling metal. They stung, and tears prickled Poison’s eyes, but he didn’t cry, and they didn’t bleed. 

His calves were electrified with the pain from all the scrapes and burned they’d received by themselves, with the ash getting dug into the wound like a fuck you to him personally. 

It might be, at this point. Because he still had least, what, twenty miles to go? The original assumption that the journey was only going to take two days was severely bogged down by the fact that it took him hours to get just a mile.

And Sorrow, naturally, didn’t seem to have any problems whatsoever. Damn wolf. It was fucking stupid.

Still, Poison wasn’t going to say that out loud in the fear that if he did, Sorrow would leave, and he’d be left alone when the darkness came. It sounded so fucking stupid, but he didn’t care, not at this point. 

Party Poison, revolution leader, fabulous killjoy, cherry bomb, was afraid, and it wasn’t the artificial fear Fear herself instilled when she or her pets were around. 

No, it was a fear that settled deep into his head, into his bones, into his soul. He didn’t want to be alone in the open when the night came. It wouldn’t end well for him, and he didn’t know how he knew that, but did it really matter?

The voice in his head was annoying but at least it was helpful sometimes!

Dear Destroya, Poison thought he was never going to make it to that spire. 

And… yes, he was afraid of the night, but if he just… if he closed his eyes now and… and got some sleep before nighttime… Then he could wake and travel during the night. That was the smartest thing to do, right?

With the way Sorrow whined, he didn’t agree, but in one of those bomb-blast outcroppings, he circled and laid down, looking at Poison expectantly. 

Poison knew, he knew this was a bad idea. It was a bad idea fueled by the pain in his arms and hands and legs and head, by all the contradictions he was feeling, the fear he wanted to go away.

It didn’t stop him from laying down next to Sorrow, leaning into his coat - it was warm, though it still radiated bits of wispy shadows, but he was solid, he was real, and his fur was - was oddly soft and oddly thick, like it was winter and Sorrow was protecting himself from the cold. 

Poison’s eyes fell shut before he could contemplate his fingers going numb from the pain of being burned and the cold around him, the sky turning darker as he let out a breath. 

Night had fallen, sooner than Poison expected.

For now, he was in a peaceful sleep with a Guardian next to protect him. But even Guardians couldn’t protect him from everything the wasteland had to offer.   
  



	2. And The Blood Runs Down The Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Fear cackled. “You’re right, you know. He is mine. Aptly named Sorrow; he’ll make a good companion.” ___
> 
> __Maybe Poison should've listened._ _

The spire was a glowing nuisance the further Poison walked. 

With Sorrow next to him and his destination clear, everything in his felt designed to keep him from reaching the spire, the taunting structure like it was mocking, taunting him for  _ daring  _ to think he could breach its walls.

But if there was one thing Party Poison was known for beyond being a kick-ass revolution leader with a sly tongue, it was being obnoxiously stubborn up to the point of getting broken bones (that may or may not be his.)

Sorrow started to whine when they woke up, staring at the end of the ruins, to the west of where the city was, where the sky started to shift from pitch black to a lighter gray, allowing him to see his path in a way he could navigate.

Poison had never been one to wake up on time.

It was odd, but it wasn’t the most unusual thing to happen. He’d been asleep on a giant hybrid wolf named  _ Sorrow, _ who was the glorified guard dog of the personification of  _ Fear _ , and he was concerned about waking up at dawn?

Yeah, that wasn’t going to fly. So he began picking his way through the wreckage again, burning his hands and fingertips on molten steel beams, still melting into silver puddles of  _ ouch _ . 

“D’ya know the best way to get there, buddy?” Poison asked, if only because the eerie silence was starting to get to his head. 

The Zones were known for being the epicenter of everything  _ color _ and everything color included anything that could even be remotely considered  _ loud.  _ Poison had heard so many fireworks going off at any time of night, not even including the mini-bombs he head detonate in the shed behind the Diner that it was difficult to even process that there  _ wasn’t  _ noise.

Sorrow looked at him, tilting his head in what Poison interpreted as confusion, looking between Poison and the spire. 

“Yeah, there,” Poison nodded, like he was bantering with the wolf. Maybe it was a bad idea to banter with the wolf. He was going to banter with the wolf. “I want to go there. I thought we discussed this already!”

Poison hadn’t had animals before, not pets  _ or  _ stray hybrid wolves, but he was pretty sure that exhalation of breath was most definitely exasperation.

“Hey! Don’t judge me, there’s a - that one looks like it’s got  _ answers  _ for me!”

With that, Sorrow didn’t indulge Poison any further, continuing his own trek forward while Poison struggled to keep up. His gangly human limbs weren’t nearly as agile nor adapted to the desolate environment, and it was starting to show.

Like it wasn’t before.

The glowing spire. Right. The glowing spire was his destination, and it didn’t matter when he got there, right? It wasn’t like he could run in a place like this, and he wasn’t going to try to treat Sorrow like a horse. He was on his own, and time would only tell when he got there. 

When he found answers. But, inexplicably, Poison couldn’t help but want to rush - there were answers there, to his House of Wolves and wherever the Hell he was, whoever Fear was and what she did. The answer to why he was bantering with a wolf other than that he was going crazy!

He’d only been here for a day and he was already starting to talk to the wolf like he talked to Ghoul, basically. Though Poison did wonder if Sorrow had better listening skills to Ghoul, because Ghoul sometimes decided that listening to Poison ramble was boring and turned his hearing aids off.

Ghoul. 

Destroya, Poison was already starting to feel a melancholy settle in the bottom of his stomach, in the soles of his feet and numbing him to all the debris he stepped on during his journey.

Ghoul, Kobra, Jet. He wasn’t going to see them again, was he? Not only was he never going to see his  _ family  _ again, he bet that he wasn’t even going to find answers to the questions he was starting to come up with.

The spire would hold some of his answers, he knew. But there were some questions starting to form that he intuitively knew could never be answered by a spire or whoever was inside - like his purpose in  _ life  _ and not just in  _ death _ , what would become of his family after he was gone. 

Yeah, so maybe walking alone in silence with a highly affectionate hybrid wolf was starting to get to his head, especially when he was in a world he’d never seen before with an agenda he barely understood.

Whatever. He needed to stop thinking about it. It wasn’t going to do any good other than make him sluggish with burden, and he can’t have that.

Maybe if he gets to that spire, he can go home. Maybe, somehow, someway, he can go  _ home _ .

Back to the Desert, back to Zone Four, back to the Diner, back to the kitchen where he and the others would sit around and light things on fire with their lighters because they  _ could  _ and because it was too cold to go outside.

He remembered those nights. They were some of his favorites. He always sat next to Kobra and Jet, across from Ghoul so they could do their stupid elaborate handshake that ended in at least one old stockpot hosting a fire of some sort, with a ratty blanket wrapped around his shoulders and his little brother under his arm, usually protesting getting his hair ruffled.

And the  _ laughter _ .

Laughter wasn’t the most common thing throughout the Zones, but the laughter is what Poison missed the most, already. His brother’s stupid snort and Ghoul’s weird high-pitched giggle and Jet’s damn-near perfect deep laugh whenever one of them made a bad joke or Ghoul set his hair on fire what probably wasn’t the first time that day.

Silence was just that -  _ silence _ . No Kobra, no Jet, no Ghoul, no laughter. No company beyond his own head and Sorrow.

“What do you think we’ll find?’ Poison asked, leaning onto his tip-toes to scratch behind Sorrow’s ear, who gratefully leaned into it. What a giant puppy - Guardian of the House, whatever. More like pushover.

Beyond the jokes and the memories he was going over, though, Poison was scared. This wasn’t his home.

This wasn’t a nightmare, either. 

It was death, in a way that the Phoenix Witch couldn’t save him from. A loss of color to match his loss of life, Sorrow like his guide through the twisted version of what he’d wanted all his life.

The City to fall. Battery City, always, but would it look like the - the - the Graveyard horizon in front of him, the sorrow seeped into the ground until the world itself wept through ash?

_ Careful, Poison _ , that voice whispered, its first appearance since he woke up.

It didn’t startle him this time; more like a snake on his shoulders, whispering in his ear rather than a disembodied illusion of everything he needed to be. And Poison liked snakes, considering his brother was named after one unwillingly.

Careful of what, though? The only thing Poison can see for miles and miles around is the same thing he’d seen before - wreckage, bomb debris, a lack of bodies that just made the scene more eerie, though the city was closer and yet just as far away as when he started.

He was starting to think that distance didn’t work in the same way. That was going to make his job a hell of a lot more difficult.

Great! Just what he needed.

“You don’t know a better way to get there, do you?” Poison whined, leaning over to find something to rest his palm on to them vault over a beam before accidentally sticking his hand in more molten metal. Ouch ouch  _ ouch! _

And...Sorrow didn’t do the head tilt again, the,  _ really, why am I even following you?  _ Instead, the eight-feet-tall, yellow-eyed, hybrid-ghost wolf,  _ whimpered _ .

If the snake on his shoulders hadn’t concerned him as much as it should’ve, that did. Something was wrong. 

It couldn’t be that Sorrow was too far from his home, no, because he had a feeling Sorrow could be wherever Sorrow wanted to be, and Fear wanted Poison to keep him as a companion…

Wait. Why did Fear want him to keep Sorrow as a companion?

She’d already demonstrated she knew what he was thinking - so she’d know his instincts, memories too... And Poison had spent more than a year in complete and utter silence. She must’ve known it wouldn’t have driven him mad.

_ Why did Fear want Sorrow to go with him? _

Poison didn’t have the time to answer the question, because the answer came to him. 

Well...The answer tackled him, his shoulder hitting a stray piece of glass behind him with the sickening sound of cutting through both leather and skin.

Poison instinctively flinched, trying to shove whatever tackled him off of him before he realized that he couldn’t he couldn’t he  _ couldn’t  _ **_he couldn’t!_ **

Step one, what was on top of him? 

Nothing pretty, that was for sure, and Poison would’ve laughed if he wasn’t fearing for his life - not life? 

“Do you have rabies?” Poison choked out when a drop of whatever was  _ foaming from the creature’s mouth _ landed next to his head, trying to maybe distract the creature with his voice while he tried to twist his arm from underneath the rubble it got caught under when he fell - since he couldn’t  _ move his other arm because of the  _ _ glass  _ _ in his shoulder _ .

The creature twisted its head - not a tilt of its head, but, like the world was at a stand-still, a  _ twist _ with the harsh crack of bones following.

Poison swallowed the bile in his throat. 

White eyes. White eyes with matted hair with missing chunks, muddy and impossible to identify. Rotting rotting  _ rotting  _ skin. 

A uniform. 

“Get away!” The identification of the uniform is what made him shout, finally pulling his arm free and putting all his strength into shoving the creature off of him by its chest, the ribs sticking through the rotten skin. 

It doesn’t work. Poison’s hand goes _through_ the creature’s body, sharp shards of bone digging into his wrist as Poison _realized_ , as the world crashed down around him as he realized he couldn’t kill _something_ _that was already dead_.

“Sorrow!” Poison called out, beginning to try scrambling back  _ away away  _ **_away_ ** but it isn’t  _ working _ the glass in his shoulder is attached to something and he can’t move and he doesn’t know what to do and he  _ needs to find answers  _ and - 

The creature’s gone. 

Poison was too shocked to register that he wasn’t in danger, his breathing heavy and erratic despite the glass in his shoulder protesting, staring wide-eyed at the sky above him, where the grotesque creature sat. 

“Sorrow?” Poison repeated, breaking on the second syllable, shifting his gaze to the wolf.

For the first time since he left his House of Wolves, Poison was seeing the  _ Guardian of the House. _ Sorrow wasn’t a glorified guard dog, and Fear aptly named her chosen Guardian. 

And Sorrow, without any regard for what he’d done, for the milk-white  _ blood  _ stuck to the hair by his chin, dripping off his teeth, tilted his head at Poison in confusion, those vicious yellow eyes of his  _ glowing _ . 

“G...Good boy,” Poison murmurs, a weak smile falling into place,  _ Party Poison  _ coming out of the rubble of his shock. 

Time to dig glass out of his shoulder, he supposed.

Poison swallowed,  _ dreading  _ the next few moments, squeezing his eyes shut in preparation and hoping it wasn’t too bad…

There’s nothing quite like the slick sound of a knife or, in that case,  _ glass  _ leaving a body. 

But Poison didn’t feel the pain.

Confused and mildly concerned, he opened his eyes, glancing to where he’d been trapped - sure enough, the spot was bloody, with a thick glass shard sticking out of a mangled window frame.

And, as watched, the blood started to evaporate. Like it was being absorbed, back into the ground to hide the  _ horror  _ that had happened - a side effect of a far greater tragedy. Or like  _ his  _ blood didn’t  _ belong  _ there.

“Let’s...let’s keep walking…” Poison muttered, more to himself than anything, already taking his jacket off without a wince - he should be wincing from pain! Pain he  _ didn’t have! -  _ and looking for the tear from his stint with impalation.

He can’t find one. There’s no blood on the back of his jacket, either. 

Sorrow looked confused as to why  _ Poison  _ was confused. But this wasn’t how it worked - blood that was supposed to be in your body protested when it  _ wasn’t  _ in your body! He should be in pain and his jacket should be reaping the consequences!

Then again, he supposed, looking back at Sorrow, death does not work as life commands.

_ Oh, you’re more right than you intend to be _ .

The snake left him alone after that, a lone traveler with a Guardian by his side along a path he was destined to write  _ alone _ . 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spontaneous? Yes! What'd you think?


End file.
